Then came what looked like a high ball.  Of old, this had been the poorest sort for Darrin to bit, and Dick seemed to remember it.  But Darrin had changed with the years, and he felt a swift little jolt of amusement as he swung for that high one.

Just about three feet away from the plate, however, that ball took a most unexpected drop, and passed on fully eighteen inches under the swing of Darrin’s stick.

“Strike one!”

At the next Darrin’s judgment forbade him to offer, but the umpire judged it a fair ball, and called: 

“Strike two!”

Dalzell, on the bench, was leaning forward now, his chin plunged in between his hands.

“Dick Prescott hasn’t lost any of his knack for surprises,” muttered Danny.  “And if we, who know his old tricks, can’t fathom him at all, what are the other seven of us going to do?”

As the ball arched slowly back into Dick’s hands, Dalzell, in his anxiety, found himself leaping to his feet.

And now Prescott pitched, in answer to Greg’s signal, what looked like a coming jump ball.

Dave Darrin knew that throw, and was ready.  In another instant he could have dropped with chagrin, for the ball, after all, was another “drop,” and Greg Holmes had mitted it for the Army in tune to the umpire’s: 

“Strike three-out!  Two out!”

“David, little giant, your hand!” begged Dalzell, in a fiery whisper as his chum reached the bench.

“What’s up?” asked Darrin half suspiciously.

“Agree with me, now—–­make deep and loud the solemn vow that we’ll use Dick and Greg just as they’ve treated us!”

“We will, if we can,” nodded Darrin, more serious than his chum.  “But I always try to tell you, Danny boy, that it’s best not to do your bragging until after you’ve scuttled your ship.”

Just as Dave had stepped away from the plate, Hutchins, the little first baseman of the Navy, had bounded forward.

Hutchins was wholly cool, and had keen eye for batting.  He hoped, despite what he had heard of Prescott’s cleverness, to send Navy spirits booming by at least a two-bagger.

“Strike one!”

Prescott had not wasted any moments, this time, and Hutchins was caught unawares.  The little first baseman flushed and a steely look came into his eyes.

At the next one he struck, but it came across the plate as an out-shoot that was just too far out for Hutchins’s reach.  Had he not offered it would have been a “called ball.”

With two strikes called against him, and nothing moving, Hutchins felt the ooze coming out of his neck and forehead.  The Navy had been playing grand ball that spring.  It would never do to let the Army get too easy a start.

But Dick poised, twirled and let go.  It was a straight-away, honest and fair ball that he sent.  To be sure there was a trace of in-shoot about it that made Hutchins misjudge it so that, in the next instant, the passionless umpire sounded the monotonous solo: